New twist in Common Core wars

A new front has opened in the Common Core wars — over testing contracts.

The high-stakes battle is undermining one of the Obama administration’s most prized initiatives: its vision, backed by more than $370 million in federal funds, of testing students across the country on a common set of exams in math, reading and writing.

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The administration wants children in Mississippi to be measured against the same bar as children in Massachusetts or Michigan. But now a testing revolt is spreading across the country, adding to a slew of troubles for the Common Core initiative, which began as a bipartisan effort but has come under fire from parents and teachers across the political spectrum.

Four years ago, about 40 states expressed interest in using shared tests. But at least 17 already have backed away from using them this spring, including several of the most populous states, such as New York, Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Often, the pushback has come from state legislators furious at the expectation that they would appropriate tens of millions for a test developed with federal funds and controlled by a faceless consortium — without a chance to consider competing products. “Alarm bells were going off in everyone’s district,” Michigan state Sen. Phil Pavlov said.

More defections may loom in a half-dozen states, among them Louisiana, Missouri and perhaps New Jersey.

Even states that are still officially committed to the shared exams are flexing their independence. Several are using the federally funded exams just for third through eighth grades and using different tests for high school.

The rebellion ensures that “the Common Core will certainly be an Obama legacy — though probably not the one he had in mind,” said Frederick Hess, an education policy analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Indeed, Common Core opponents are gleeful at the prospect of fanning concerns about the exams to drive more states away from the standards.

“We’re really at the beginning of public scrutiny of these testing consortia,” said Emmett McGroarty, a leader of the anti-Common Core movement at the American Principles Project, a conservative think tank. “This is by no means over. It will continue to snowball.”

Even some Obama allies are angry at the administration’s decision to pour money into developing new exams years before most teachers began introducing the academic standards into their classrooms. They say it made the Common Core feel scary and punitive rather than an exciting new way to challenge students to achieve.

The National Education Association this week will consider launching a lobbying push to dramatically reduce federally mandated testing — which could undercut the administration’s Common Core goals even further. The other big union, the American Federation of Teachers, has also been outspoken on the issue.

“The federal government has a lot of blame here,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said. “This fixation on testing is just wrong.”

Dorie Nolt, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, said the administration invested in developing new exams “in response to governors, school chiefs and educators who wanted to move away from the bubble tests of the past.” She noted that Secretary Arne Duncan has called for “a common-sense middle ground on testing and test prep.”

A ‘big time’ concern

Planning for Common Core tests began in earnest in 2010, when the Education Department granted $186 million to each of two consortia — groups of states that agreed to work together to develop high-tech exams that would be far more challenging than the typical fill-in-the-bubble multiple choice. The two consortia, known as PARCC and Smarter Balanced, paid testing companies to do most of the work in consultation with state officials and educators.

For one thing, the tests would be long. And there would be a lot of them.

PARCC estimates its exams will take eight hours for an average third-grader and nearly 10 hours for high school students — not counting optional midyear assessments to make sure students and teachers are on track.

PARCC also plans to develop tests for kindergarten, first- and second- graders, instead of starting with third grade as is typical now. And it aims to test older students in 9th, 10th and 11th grades instead of just once during high school.

Cost is also an issue. Many states need to spend heavily on computers and broadband so schools can deliver the exams online as planned. And the tests themselves cost more than many states currently spend — an estimated $19 to $24 per student if they’re administered online and up to $33 per student for paper-and-pencil versions.

That adds up to big money for testing companies. Pearson, which won the right to deliver PARCC tests, could earn more than $1 billion over the next eight years if enough states sign on.

States can make minor modifications in the Pearson contract. For instance, the contract anticipates a shift to grading student essays by computer algorithm, assuming the technology pans out, but lets states pay more to have them scored by a human reader. PARCC officials, however, said they expected member states to adopt the contract largely intact.

That lack of local control is a “big time” concern, Arizona state Sen. Chester Crandell said.

Then he repeated it, voice rising: “Big time, big time.”

He’s not alone in that frustration.

In January, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear withdrew from the PARCC consortium, citing a state law that “requires a fair and equitable” competitive bid process. Tennessee and Arizona soon followed. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has announced plans to do the same.

Those states could, in theory, still pick the PARCC exam after examining bids from several companies.

But it’s unclear if they will be able to do so because a legal dispute in New Mexico has tied the PARCC testing process in knots. The dispute could drag on for months, derailing the timetable for delivering the common exams and driving away still more states.

Arkansas, for instance, plans to go its own way on testing if the dispute isn’t resolved by mid-July, said Kimberly Friedman, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Education.

The other consortium has had defections, too. In Michigan, state Sen. Pavlov led a bipartisan effort to cancel the state’s plans to administer the Smarter Balanced test next spring. Instead, the state will seek bids for a new exam.

Pavlov said he wants Michigan officials, not a distant consortium, to oversee the tests and have the power to demand changes if problems arise with the way the questions are phrased or exams are scored. “Our priority has to be to put Michigan kids first,” he said.

Yet some teachers complain that kids could end up the losers as political jockeying over the tests intensifies. In Michigan, second-grade teacher Julie Brill says she and her colleagues are expected to spend the coming year teaching Common Core standards — while preparing kids for a non-Common Core test that measures different skills entirely. “It’s just so crazy,” she said.

And in Florida, which broke with PARCC last year, third-grade teacher Mindy Grimes-Festge says she’s glad to be out of a Common Core test she believed was designed to make children fail — but she has only the most minimal information about the replacement exams.

“We’re going in blind,” Grimes-Festge said. “It’s like jumping from one frying pan to another. Just different cooks.”